A MILLIONAIRE'S HISTORY.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3858, 28 November 1883, Page 4

A MILLIONAIRE'S HISTORY.

Mr J. Gould, who has just been examined by the United States Committee on Labor andjEducation, gavo them an interesting account of his early life and of the origin of his enormous fortune. His father Avas a small farmer, and the future millionaire, who possessed neither shoes nor stockings at tho time, minded tho coavs. At tho age of fourteen ho exchanged his occupation for the more congenial one of keeping books for a blacksmith, avlio gavo him no other remuneration than his board. Ho managed to attend a night school, Avhere ho picked up BOmo mathematics and some notions of engineering, for which he had always a marked taste. Ho rose at throe every morning and worked at his favorite study till six. Ho next got a placo as assistant in a country Btore at 20dol a month, and some time afterwards ho left tho store for a desk in a Surveyor's offico. His employer having failed, his clerk started in business on his own account; aud tho first money ho earned Avas a dollar AA'hich a farmer gave him for making a noon-mark to tell tho time by. Ho executed several local maps in the course of that summer, and sold the copyright of them for 500dol. In tho next year he made similar maps of Albany and DekiAvaro, and realised by their salo tho considerable sum of 5,000d01. This sufficed to purchase a share in a largo tannery, of which ho eventually became solo proprietor, and Avhich ho then sold, realising a handsome profit on the transaction. The panic of 1857 occurring at this period in his career, tho Rutland and Washington railroad to Troy ivas offering its first mortgage bonds at lOcents to tho dollar. Mr Gould bought them all, principally on credit, and thus became owner of a line of raihvay sixty miles long. Having successfully developed the business of tho road, it soon began to pay dividends, and he was able to sell out at an immenso profit. Tho Cleveland and Pittsburgh and the Union Pacific Avere his next ventures. He fared equally Avell Avith them ; and from that time to the present his career has been ono of almost uniform and unbroken success. —St. James' Gazette.